Suddenly Mary intervened. To Jemmy’s surprise she turned sharply on the dowager and said, ‘Madam, be silent. You have said quite enough.’ Lady Dudley was even more surprised than Jemmy, and was rendered speechless for a valuable moment. Lady Mary continued in an even voice, ‘The King of France and the Pretender are both ordering mourning for a brave soldier who was, may I remind you, cousin to the King. And it is my husband who decides what shall be done at Morland Place, not you.’
‘Lady Mary, you don’t understand—’ Lady Dudley began. ‘If your illustrious brother should hear of it—’
‘He will certainly hear of it,’ Jemmy said, looking at Mary with suppressed hope. He explained Annunciata’s wishes, and added, ‘I hope I may prevail upon you to use your influence with your brother to obtain his help in this matter. It is a thing which will need activity at the highest level.’
‘This is outrageous, sir, outrageous!’ Lady Dudley cried, her face growing mottled. ‘You have the audacity to suggest that Lady Mary should involve herself in a matter which will without doubt deeply offend the King, and not only that—’
But Jemmy and Mary were looking into each other’s eyes, ignoring her. ‘It is very important to her, Mary,’ Jemmy said gently, ‘and thus to me. He was born and brought up here, at Morland Place; he was like an older brother to my father; he fought to save Morland Place from being pillaged and burned after the siege. Oh, there is so much I could tell you—’
And Mary suddenly longed with all her heart to hear, to sit with Jemmy, alone with him, to have him look at her with those suddenly gentle eyes, to have all his attention, and his respect, and perhaps, even, his love. Hers had been a lonely life, always, and though she loved her two sons, their love and company could not replace a husband’s. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You shall tell me. We will order the mourning, and you shall tell me what to put in my letter to my brother.’
‘Lady Mary, I warn you!’ Lady Dudley began indignantly, but Mary turned a cold eye upon her.
‘Madam, you have leave,’ she said firmly, and held her disbelieving stare unwaveringly. After a moment, the dowager withdrew with icy dignity.
In the May of 1732 Lady Mary lay in the great bedchamber at Morland Place struggling to give birth to her third child. It had been a difficult pregnancy, and for the last two months of it she had been virtually confined to her room. Alessandra and her maid Rachel attended her, with Edmund’s wife Augusta looking on: Robert’s Rachel was still confined to her own bed after the birth of her second son a week before, or she would certainly have been there as well. Lady Dudley was no longer at Morland Place. She and Mary had quarrelled even more seriously when Mary had become pregnant, and Mary had invited her to seek a home elsewhere, and the atmosphere had been the lighter for her going.
Now as the midwife wiped the sweat from her brow and she writhed again with the racking pain that had been going on already for ten hours, she thought how happy the months had been since Karellie’s funeral, in comparison with her life before. She and Jemmy were still not very intimate with each other – her reserved nature and his continual busyness prevented it – but they met now on terms of calm friendliness, occasionally deepening into affection, which once or twice had expressed itself in physical terms. He took her into his confidence a great deal more when Lady Dudley was not there to come between them, and she had sometimes wondered how much of her life’s isolation had been caused by her duenna.
She groaned as another pain tore through her. She was sure she would not survive this childbirth, but she was glad she had known at least a little love, and that she would die regretted by her husband. She sought Alessandra’s face through the mist of pain and gasped.
‘If I die, tell him – tell him—’ Alessandra pressed her hand firmly and bent nearer to catch the words. ‘Tell him I love him,’ she managed to finish. Alessandra nodded wordlessly, catching the midwife’s eye. She did not believe Mary would survive either.
Below, in the drawing room, Jemmy paced up and down, followed by the anxious Fand, and by the faintly amused eyes of Marie-Louise who, with all the confidence of being fifteen and never having experienced a day’s illness in her life, was sure that Jemmy was worrying about nothing. She had come over with Alessandra in order to shew off to Jemmy her new riding habit, which was of emerald green cloth, and in which she knew she looked enchanting, with her red-gold hair and tawny eyes. Alessandra had gone upstairs to the birth chamber, bidding her stay below and keep Jemmy occupied; but Jemmy simply walked about muttering to himself and casting anguished glances at the ceiling whenever Mary let out a louder cry than usual, and hadn’t noticed Marie-Louise at all.
‘Oh God! It’s all my fault,’ Jemmy cried now, putting his hand to his head. ‘If only I had – should never have—’ He looked at Marie-Louise and away again, conscious only of her youth. Marie-Louise tapped her fingers irritably against the chimney-piece.
‘Really, Jemmy, people have babies all the time. It’s nothing to worry about. Why, Lady Mary has had two already, and there was nothing to it. And only last week you know Rachel had her boy, and there was nothing to that. You mustn’t fret so. Why don’t you come out for a ride with me, and when we get back, it will all be over.’
Jemmy groaned at the words, and tore at his hair. ‘All over! Dear God!’
‘Oh do come,’ she wheedled. ‘It’s a perfect day for riding, and it really is too ridiculous to stay here when there’s nothing we can do. I’m sure Lady Mary would wish you to go,’ she added with what she thought was cunning.
Jemmy stared at her, and then with an odd grimace said, ‘Marie-Louise, go upstairs, there’s a dear girl, and see if there’s any news. They won’t let me anywhere near.’
Marie-Louise pouted. ‘Oh very well. But I must say you are a great disappointment to me. I put this on especially to divert you, and you have not even noticed it. I might as well have come in sackcloth.’ She got up to go to the door, and at that moment it opened to shew Augusta’s frightened, pretty face.
‘Oh dear, Mr Morland, I think you ought to send for the doctor. The midwife says we ought to have the doctor. Oh dear, poor lady! I vow and swear, I shall never have another after this! Oh!’ as a scream rent the air, ‘I do think the doctor ought to be sent for very soon.’
She had to step back very quickly to avoid being knocked over by Jemmy.
The silence, when it came, was more unnerving than the cries of distress had been before. Jemmy was sitting alone in the steward’s room with one guttering candle. Even Fand had deserted him, to seek the comfort of the hall hearth and the other hounds. Marie-Louise had gone home before sunset, and it was now nearly four in the morning. At last he heard the doctor’s footsteps coming across the hall, but he was too tired and afraid to get to his feet, only looked up dully as the doctor appeared in the doorway. She’s dead, he thought, and the idea filled him with a hollow pain.
The doctor’s eyes were red-veined with weariness. He had not left his patient for over twelve hours.
‘Both alive,’ he said economically. ‘God knows how. She must never have another, do you hear me? Not on any account.’
Jemmy nodded, and slowly the understanding seeped through him, warming his cold heart. ‘And the child?’ he said at last.
‘A girl.’
A girl! Somehow he had not thought of that. A foolish smile began to spread over his face. A daughter! ‘I never had a daughter before,’ he said foolishly. ‘Can I see my wife?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘She’s sleeping now, and she must not be disturbed. Sleep is the best healer for her at the moment. Tomorrow, when she wakes of her own accord, you can see her. But you can see the child if you wish. It’s healthy.’
Jemmy followed the doctor up the stairs, and waited outside the great bedchamber until Rachel brought the child out, firmly wrapped in its shawl, and placed it in Jemmy’s arms. It was so tiny and light – he always forgot how tiny newborn babies were – and he stared down into its crumpled, rosepetal f
ace with wonder. His heart was full, and a strange jumble of images tumbled through his mind as he looked at his daughter. For some reason, he found himself thinking of Aliena.
Mary won’t want to be troubled about naming the babe he thought, not when she’s been so ill. I had better give her a name. Jubilance and a strange, fierce possessiveness surged through him. I shall name her, and she will be mine; mine and named for me. He touched the baby’s cheek with a fingertip, and she frowned in her first, determined sleep. I shall call her Jemima, he thought.
BOOK TWO
The Axe
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
Throughout the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
Thomas Osbert Mordaunt: The Call
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jemima pricked her finger for the fourth time, and sighed for the eighth time, and cast a longing glance towards the window of the drawing room and the sunlit day outside. It seemed so unfair to her that she should be shut up here to do embroidery on such a day, when everyone else in the world, she firmly believed, was out enjoying themselves. She looked surreptitiously around the room. Her mother, sitting very upright in one of the chimney chairs, was reading, her spectacles balanced on the end of her nose so that she did not have to bend her head to see the words. Jemima did not have to see the title to know that it was a book of sermons that she was reading, for Lady Mary was a Protestant, and very pious. Jacob, the cook, who was Jemima’s best friend, had explained to her that Protestants, like her mother, were very pious but not at all religious, while Catholics, like him and Jemima’s father and most of the people at Morland Place, were religious but not at all pious. Jemima did not entirely understand, being only eight, but it confirmed her in her belief that she did not like Protestants, which was founded on the fact that she did not like her mother. Her mother did not like her, either, as Jemima very well knew. Her mother blamed Jemima for the fact that she had to walk with a stick and got pains if she did anything very active; she loved Jemima’s brothers, Thomas and Henry, and had no room in her heart for anyone else except her freckled spaniel, Spot.
In the other fireside chair was her uncle George, who also held a book but was not reading it. He was asleep, as he always was at this time of day, but he was so fat that his bulk wedged him upright in the chair and his chins were propped up on his cravat, and unless he snored, a stranger might easily believe he really was reading Robinson Crusoe, which rested open at page sixteen on his large knees. Uncle George rose early every day and rode or hunted vigorously until dinner-time. After dinner, replete with food and wine, he slept until supper time, and after supper he went to bed. Lady Mary despised Uncle George and had once in Jemima’s hearing called him a parasite. Jemima had asked Jacob what a parasite was, and he had said it was a flea. This had puzzled her, for she could not see any resemblance in Uncle George to a flea, until she remembered that when he was out hunting he was quite fearless and would often jump extremely high hedges. She supposed this was what her mother was referring to, although it seemed strange that Lady Mary should disapprove of it. Jemima rather liked Uncle George, who was kind to her in his silent way. Sometimes when they met on the stairs, he would smile shyly at her and give her a sweetmeat from the little enamelled box in his coat pocket.
Looking down at her work again, she saw that she had got another bloodspot on the linen from her pricked finger. With so many rusty marks, the shirt she was embroidering was beginning to resemble her mother’s dog. She sighed again. This time Lady Mary looked up from her book and said, ‘Do stop puffing and blowing in that way, Jemima, it is most unladylike. And sit up straight. You slouch like a dairymaid. Really, Chort, you must instruct Miss Jemima in better deportment, or I shall have to see about replacing you.’
‘I beg your pardon, milady,’ said Jane Chort, Jemima’s governess, humbly, and when Lady Mary looked down at her book again, she gave Jemima a savage frown, which meant, ‘Now see how you have got me into trouble.’ Jemima gave a grimace of contrition, and managed to stop herself only just in time from sighing again. It was unfair, however, for it was only she that was suffering in this way. Aunt Augusta had gone over to Shelmet Rectory to visit Aunt Rachel, and had taken with her little Augusta and Caroline, who would normally have been sharing Jemima’s imprisonment. The boys, Aunt Rachel’s Robert and Frederick, and Aunt Augusta’s William, who would normally be doing lessons in the schoolroom with Father Andrews, had been let off that afternoon because, with Quarter Day approaching, the priest had so much to do, and they had gone to help with the haying. Jemima’s brothers, who had attained the inaccessible heights of sixteen and fourteen years, were pretty much a law unto themselves, since Papa did not trouble himself with them, and they could wind Mama round their little fingers, and they were off somewhere, probably over at Twelvetrees or riding on the moors.
Jemima put the last stitch into the leaf she was embroidering, oversewed it, and cut the thread, and spread out her work to survey it. It was, to be sure, a very uneven and disagreeable-looking leaf, and no fit companion for the neat crimson rose that Jane had done before passing the work on to Jemima. Jemima stared at it and felt the frustration welling inside her. She hated to sew, and she hated to do bad work, and it seemed to her a piece of monstrous foolishness that she should be forced to go on and on doing something she was so bad at. If only she could talk to Papa about it, she was sure he would arrange things better for her; but Papa was always so busy, and she hardly ever saw him, and then never alone. At eight years old she did not, of course, take her meals with the grownups, and unless she met him by accident somewhere in the house, the only times she saw him were twice a day in the chapel, and on the occasions when she was brought down to the drawing room after supper to play to her parents. When there were guests, it was usually Augusta who was sent for to play, for although Jemima played better than her, Augusta was very good for her age, which was only five, and also with her plump pink face, golden ringlets and blue eyes, was very much prettier than Jemima. Jemima had dark hair that was always untidy, and her face was too thin, and her expression was usually thoughtful and earnest – disagreeable, her mother called it. She did not smile winniugly at people as Augusta did, and tended to ask too many questions, and look at people too sharply.
She selected a new piece of silk, and began the tedious business of threading her needle, and then there was a diversion: a servant came in to say that the samples of silk had arrived from York and that Lady Mary’s woman, Rachel, had taken them up to her room. Lady Mary put her book aside, took her silver-tipped, ebony cane, and with a final severe look at Jemima, which was a clear warning to her to work hard, she left the room. Jemima immediately felt happier, and managed to persuade the end of her silk to pass through the tiny eye. A few stitches later one of the nursery maids peeped hesitantly round the door and beckoned to Jane, mouthing some evidently urgent message. Jane went to the door and carried on a conversation sotto voce which Jemima could not catch, except that it seemed her presence was urgently required in the nursery. Jane looked across at Jemima doubtfully, and Jemima kept her head bent over her work and stitched away industriously, trying to exude trustworthiness.
She heard Jane say, ‘Well, just for a moment, then. If Lady Mary should come back—’
‘But she’ll be hours with those silks,’ the nursery maid whispered urgently. Jane gave one more doubtful glance over her shoulder, and then went with the maid, leaving the door open. Jemima listened for the footsteps to die away up the stairs, and then let out a sigh of relief. In his chair, Uncle George slept peacefully, his lips exploding in a soft puff at every exhalation. Jemima felt a surge of affection for him, dear, reliable Uncle George, and she blew him a kiss as she pattered silently out.
Outside she waited her moment and then scudded like a blown leaf across the staircase hall and the great hall, down the kitchen passage and into the pantry. A door led from the buttery i
nto the courtyard, but there was always someone in the courtyard, and she would certainly be challenged if she tried to walk out through the barbican. But the pantry had a door into the inner courtyard, and she only needed to cross that to reach the brewhouse passage, which gave onto the back door. The back door was hardly ever used, because the bridge over the moat was rotting and unsafe, but it would take Jemima’s small weight. A few moments more and she was out into the sunshine, and free, and her heart lifted with joy. She would probably get into very bad trouble for running out like this – she might even get a whipping, unless her father interfered on her part – but she didn’t care. Just then all she cared about was the warm, sweet air and the grass and the great arch of sky above her and the mad carolling of the skylarks, so high in the blue that they were invisible.
She had no idea where Papa was, but she thought the most likely place was Twelvetrees. In any case, they would know his whereabouts at Twelvetrees. She pulled off her cap for the pleasure of feeling the hot sun on her head, and swinging the cap round and round by its laces, she set off at a run. She was soon much too hot, and slowed to a walk, and decided to cut through the bottom end of the orchard for the coolness. There was a place that William had told her about, where you could climb over the wall by the aid of an old thorn tree that grew outside. She reached through the slit in her dress and thrust her cap into the pocket which was tied round her waist under her skirt, for she would certainly need both hands for climbing.
She managed pretty well, despite her hampering clothes – how well she would climb, she thought, if only she could wear breeches like a boy – and it was not difficult to swing herself across onto the top of the orchard wall. But the wall itself was old and crumbling and slippery with moss, and she could not steady herself upon it. She heard her dress rip as it snagged on something, and with a stifled cry she half slipped, half jumped, landing with a thump on the orchard grass.
Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Page 14